Dame Margot Turner
dame margot turner
Brigadier Dame Margot Turner, DBE, RRC was born in Finchley on 10th May 1910. Two decades later, Margot joined the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service, a wing of the medical services of the British Army.
Her first overseas posting was to the Far East, and she was serving in Malaya when the Japanese invaded in 1941. A year later, Margot was working in a British Military Hospital in Singapore where she was forced to evacuate due to the barrage of shelling and bombing by Japanese forces. British and Australian nurses, along with women and children were evacuated, but the escape fleet was ambushed in the narrow waters off Sumatra and the ship Turner was on was sunk.
After three days on a deserted islet she was picked up by another vessel which was then too sunk by a Japanese warship. With assistance from another QA nurse she assembled sixteen survivors onto a raft. But after 3 days, despite her best efforts to care for those stranded with her, she was to be the only survivor. She was collected by a Japanese cruiser and was interred in a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camp for the duration of the conflict.
After the war, Margot continued her career as a nurse becoming Chief Military Nurse in 1964 and made a Dame in 1965. After her retirement she volunteered on a hospital ship. She died in Brighton in 1993 aged 83.
SECOND WORLD WAR CONTENTS:
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